I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. I would like to say that I haven’t because I’ve been busy. I’m always busy; that’s not the reason. I have been thinking about what I want to write about, I feel like I have so much to share, but it’s been hard to put into clear terms. I also am struggling with wanting hide and isolate. Will isolation always be my default? I hope not. I still have hope. I’m learning to trust myself and others and Jesus. It’s a big lifelong job, I think.

I know I have had so much movement these past 6-7 months as I have been stepping into some painful areas of my life. I think I have written about this before, but the deepness of grief that I have experienced in this part of the journey is gut-wrenching. I have always been a kind of a tearful person. I would well up with tears at awkward, inopportune times. I have always found it slightly embarrassing and seemingly unnecessary. I now feel like those tears were a result of this deep grief I had yet to express and process.

My grief comes from lots of different places. I have been grieving the loss of opportunities as a result of trauma. I have not engaged in life for much of my adulthood. That’s a major loss that I cannot go back and change.

I am grieving the loss of my non-traumatized self that I never got to know. Who would I have been if I was never abused? How would I react now to others if I had never been violated? Would I have been able to engage in life without dissociating to the point I didn’t even feel like I was inside my own body? Would I have joy–the type of joy I have been searching for ever since? All of these questions I can’t answer and the only thing I can think is how awfully tragic it all is.

I am also grieving the loss of relationship I have felt with Jesus. I have experienced deeply the betrayal of not being rescued by my creator–my jealous bridegroom. The great physician, the most sovereign. Those feelings of abandonment I have felt are deep-seated and mostly undiscoverable until just recently.

So what do I do when I feel like it’s all too much? What do I do when I can’t get my arms around this huge thing that has always been a part of me? First–I resist! My grief prison has been my friend, my confidant, the only predicable piece of me. But just like all sources of comfort outside of Jesus it is also deeply flawed. What has protected me is now destroying me. This which has kept me safe is now keeping me alone.

Second–I make the choice to take the risk of trust and vulnerability. Trust in myself, others, and especially in Jesus. Vulnerability in admitting that I have been trying to cover over my pain with all sorts of things by providing for myself rather than depending on Jesus–who, by the way, has proven Himself to me over and over.

Third–rest in the timing of God. As long as I have been on this healing journey His timing has never been off. Never too early, never too late. You know what? It’s rarely on my timeframe, funny how that works! I have been receiving the gift of rest and patience recently. It is an amazing, miraculous thing to realize that I really can trust God’s timing.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, travel on. Just take the next best step that is in front of you right now. It takes courage, resolve, and strength and the rewards are bigger and beyond what even you can imagine.